Halloween, Permission, and Being Something Else

Halloween was always a thrilling time for me, both as a child and as an adult. It’s not that I was that into being scared; scary things were actually way too intense for me when I was little. And candy was nice, but given the weird scares of the 1980s, I wasn’t allowed to eat

So what is “embodied consent,” anyway?

For the past few weeks, I have been posting about different aspects of the workshop I will be giving this weekend at the Bound in Boston: Wicked Women conference, which is called “Embodied Consent: Finding Your Yes, No, and Maybe.” But what is it, exactly, that I mean by “embodied consent”? It’s an interesting question,

Test post

I’m testing to see if posting on this site will syndicate to my wordpress.com site. ETA: Good lord, it worked!

Embodied Consent: Where is your “yes”?

(Part 3 of my series on Embodied Consent, leading up to my talk on the subject at the Bound in Boston: Wicked Women Conference next weekend.) One of my favorite truisms about consent is that a true “yes” is not possible without the option for a true “no.” That being said, one of my primary

Embodied Consent: Where is your ‘no’?

(Part 2 of my series leading up to my talk on Embodied Consent, happening October 11 at the Bound in Boston: Wicked Women conference.) So I’ve talked in this space about how hard it can be to say no. But what about to feel no? In my work, Rubenfeld Synergy Method, we always come back to

Finding your yes, no, and maybe, part 1: No

In anticipation of the talk I’m giving the weekend of October 10 at Wicked Women, I want to write some posts that lay groundwork for the concepts I’ll be working with in that talk. The first of these is the very simple idea that saying no is hard. In last year’s talk, Sam and I

Embodied Consent Workshop at the Wicked Women Conference

I am pleased to announce that I will once again be giving a class at Bound in Boston’s Wicked Women event this year, over the Columbus Day weekend in October. This will be a revival and revision of the class I did last year with Sam at Safety Beyond Safewords, but I’ll be doing it

Facing (bodying) the fragility of life

It is hard to know what to do in the face of such shocking news. I found myself struck by a strange and nonspecific sadness, the strange regret – guilt? – that I never got to know him well, that now I never will. I’ve been near tears several times today, but never all the way to breaking. Some part of me seems to say, What right do you have?

[Rerun] Self-care made simple

One of the most potent things I have found, both in my training and with my clients, is the utmost importance of self-care. For every acute problem, every chronic stress, every relationship explosion, cancer diagnosis, loathed job or existential crisis, self-care comes up again and again as not just the most important, but the very first

[Rerun] Things Without (Shame)

I recently discovered the wonderful little comic, Things Without Arms and Without Legs (A Comic About Creatures Who Are Kind), and it delights me. But as adorable and lovely as they are all on their own, I was especially taken when I found this old post, about some favorite topics of mine: vulnerability and shame.